by Neal Asher
'What's happening now?'
'Trees… burning… No, it's coming up!'
Cormac stared across the ruins and saw the Maker rise into the sky. It held the two dracomen silhouetted against its body, looking black as if charred by that fantastic light. Suddenly it became an actinic torpedo, blurred, wing-sails grabbing at the air, and then it became a streak of fire to the east.
That it had no AG was obvious at a glance through the dusty portal. Its main body was a flattened cylinder terminating in a full-screen chainglass cockpit. A pair of ion engines was set back on either side of the cockpit, and another pair was set just forward of a stabilizing fin like a huge rudder. Each of the four engines was a sphere with a slice taken off it to expose the grids inside. Each could be moved independently to give a degree of forward and reverse thrust, but only so far as they did not blast into each other. The shuttle might well be fuelled and its small fusion tokomac might still be serviceable, Jarvellis could not tell. The shuttle rested on the floor of the small bay with the doors open before it, and the arc of the station curving away from the top of that opening. If she wished to reach it, she had to cross ten metres of floor through vacuum. That would not have been too much of a problem for the Outlinkers, and maybe she too could have made it. But how long would it take for the lock on this side of the bay to cycle? How long for the lock on the shuttle? And would there be atmosphere inside it?
Jarvellis moved away from the portal and looked around. This worn corridor ran round the bay in an arc, and there were doors behind her. She tried one, pressing the correct button this time. The door slid aside with a low grinding to reveal a wedge-shaped room that was utterly empty. The fifth room she tried contained the lockers and soon she was inspecting a spacesuit that made the one she had owned seem state of the art. It had a bowl helmet of scratched plastiglass: a helmet that was actually breakable. The material of the suit itself was layered, and just that: material. There was no armouring, no sealant layer. Air was provided by an external bottle with a vulnerable pipe that plugged into the neck-ring. She wiped dirt from an old digital readout and saw that the bottle did contain air, though how the pressure reading related to time or suit pressure, she could not say. Laboriously she pulled the suit on, and then tucked the helmet under her arm as she headed for the lock. The inner door, a great thick thing that actually operated on hinges, opened with surprising silence. As she stepped inside, a different noise greeted her.
'Is that you in that lock, Captain Jarvellis?' Tull asked over the intercom.
Jarvellis ignored the voice, put her helmet on and twisted it into place. Maybe the seals would not work so well. Maybe they would work for long enough. She opened the valve on the air bottle and got a hiss of air that was breathable, but had a vaguely putrid smell.
'Captain, please come out of that lock. Very little of the equipment there has been serviced. You could kill yourself… oh, I see… I wouldn't advise trying to use that shuttle. It has no AG, you realize? Those ion eng… you… s…'t…'
The inner lock was irised. It made no noise as it opened, but that was because there was now no air to transmit sound. Neat way of shutting Tull up anyway. Jarvellis stepped out of the lock and hurried over to the shutde. The door she saw was not a door with an airlock. She twisted the two handles at the side of it and hinged it open. It was a single-seal door; only with it closed would the shuttle fill with air. Back when this station was constructed, weight had played an all-important role. A full airlock would have been too much extra. Jarvellis stepped inside and closed the door.
White vapour was now leaking from the folds at the elbow of the primitive suit. It was also leaking out round the neck-seal and painting glitters of frost across the plastiglass.
The cabin of the shuttle was simply a plain box, with spring fixings along the floor to take either chairs or cargo straps. Ahead there was another hinged door. She moved quickly to it and tried to turn the handles. Nothing gave. She put her weight on the handles, and they started to move just before her feet left the floor. She pulled herself down and jammed her foot in one of the spring fixings to try again. Vapour bloomed around the door, then dissipated. She got it open and pulled herself in. Even as she closed the door, she found herself panting for air that was getting increasingly thin. A button. Cycle. She hit it and dragged herself to a dusty seat before the console and control column. She searched for a readout and found it above the door. The readout was in bar and she was not sure what was required. She cracked open the helmet when vapour ceased to flow from the seal. No difference now anyway; there was littie left in the suit.
'Captain Jarvellis… Jarvellis… I hope you can hear me. Can you hear me?'
'Yes, I can hear you, Tull,' she said.
'Good,' said the Oudinker. 'Now, just so you don't kill us all by trying to start those ion engines in the station, I'll tell you how to use the magnetic impeller. It'll get you out of that bay and away. Beyond that, you're on your own.'
Jarvellis dropped into the pilot's seat. The padding crunched underneath her and dust circulated in the cockpit. She studied the antique controls and wondered if it might have been better to go meekly to mind-wipe. 'Go on, then, run me through it,' she said.
Aiden and Cento had their heads bowed and their shoulders slumped as if in exhaustion. Cormac saw that their emulations were off as well: not a breath moved their torsos, nor the flicker of an eyelid crossed their eyes. like two marionettes with their strings cut, they sat on the lichen-covered plascrete and broken glass. Their weapons were lying on the ground beside them, ignored.
'Aiden? Cento?'
Was there something there? A shiver of movement? Cormac could not believe that they had been completely disabled. He had previously seen nothing short of a proton gun with that capability.
'Aiden?'
Aiden's head lifted slowly and he stared at Cormac as if he did not recognize him. He blinked once, slowly, and it seemed for a moment as if he was going to ask him something. Then Aiden's shoulders straightened, his breathing emulation restarted, and he slowly stood up.
'Just enough to knock out our systems,' he said, and looked down at Cento. Cento was slower to reassume his guise of humanity. First he practised a grin which was a parody, then his breaming emulation restarted and he too got up. Cormac turned away from them and went over to Thorn.
'Thorn?'
Thorn lay flat on his back, staring up at the sky. There were burns on his clothing and there was a strong smell of burnt hair about him. His beard, Cormac noted, was in need of some reshaping. His helmet lay beside him with its glass still polarized. His weapon lay some distance away. A trickle of blood had congealed below his nose.
'About stun three,' he said tighdy, and looked up at Cormac. Cento and Aiden passed Cormac on either side, reached down simultaneously, and pulled Thorn to his feet.
'Gave about as good as it got,' said Thorn from wobbly legs, men, freeing his right arm from Cento, ran his hand over his beard and frowned.
Cormac watched the three contemplatively: the only real injuries seemed to be to their dignity. 'It knocked you all down because you fired on it. Having the ability to knock out Aiden and Cento means it had the ability to kill you, Thorn… Tell me, Aiden, would you say that creature was completely constituted of energy fields?'
'That would not be possible. It must have some matter distribution for the fields to anchor themselves to, even if it is very diffuse. Dragon said it was partially gaseous.'
'Then I know how to kill it. Just as it knew precisely how to kill us. Come on.' As he walked back to the sky-bikes, Cormac pulled out his comunit. 'Sergeant, put the carrier down at our camp. Get your men down, too, and form a perimeter again.' He shut off the unit as the sergeant passed on his orders, then turned to Thorn. 'Thorn, I want you to mink about this. When we went down that shaft a monster attacked us, and we fired on it.'
'Yes,' said Thorn.
'No, you see there's the rub. It may have come charging towards us, and it may hav
e seemed intent on attack, but it did not scrap Cento nor kill Gant until we fired on it.'
'That's hard,' said Thorn.
'That's fact,' said Cormac. 'Maybe it intended to attack us - we don't know. We do know, however, that it was an organic machine dying from the cold.'
Cormac gestured to the bikes, and Aiden and Cento mounted them. As Thorn took the pillion behind Aiden he asked, 'What are you saying?'
'I'm saying I'm going to get to the truth of all this. You see, we've only heard one side of the story, so I want the rest of it.' He pulled his comunit as Cento took their bike into the sky. 'Mika, meet us in the carrier, will you? I'll be needing your input.'
'You'll be needing my input.'
Cormac grinned at the inferred question and turned the unit off. It could be a crippling fault, that inability to ask a direct question. He looked ahead and down, and saw the carrier landing. The diminutive figure of Mika was angrily striding across to it. The other sky-bikes were coming down in the forest around the encampment. When Cento landed, Cormac quickly hopped off and gestured to the other three.
'Come with me.'
He headed for the carrier, glanced at Mika, who was waiting beside it, then pulled open the door and stuck his head inside.
'Sergeant, if you and your man there could give us a moment?'
The sergeant and the turret gunner left the carrier with expressions of bewilderment on their faces.
'What… what was that thing, sir?' the sergeant asked.
'A dragon,' said Cormac, 'a real live dragon.' As soon as the others were inside, he closed the door on the sergeant's bewilderment. He looked at Stanton, still secured in place, and then gestured for the others to sit. He paced across the floor between them, his forefinger tapping his chin and a thoughtful expression on his face.
'Right… Aiden, I want a direct line of communication with Samarkand II. Set it up with Viridian. I want Blegg and Chaline on the other end, soonest.'
'We should be able to set up the link with this carrier's transceiver.'
'Do it, then.'
Aiden stood and moved to the front of the carrier, and was soon in contact with Viridian. Cormac turned to Thorn, Cento and Mika.
'Tell me, what are your impressions? And you, Thorn, bear in mind what I said to you.'
Thorn surprised him by replying immediately. 'Seemed to me the p-beams stung it a little, or just surprised it. It defended itself from an irritation. It was more interested in the dracomen.'
'That speaks for itself,' said Mika.
'Those two grabbed the AGC - why, do you think?' Cormac asked her.
'Judging from what I learnt about their behaviour before, I thought they were out to defend you.'
'That car had a roof before. I take it they ripped it off?'
'Yes, one moment they were just standing mere, the next they were tearing the roof off the car. There was a weapon under the seat. Scar went straight to it. They ignored me. I was clearly not going to interfere. Anything that can tear bubble-sheet like that…'
Cormac looked thoughtful. 'The weapon was a laser carbine. A rather ineffectual thing to use in the circumstances, when we are thinking in terms of proton guns.'
'Perhaps they just did not realize a laser carbine would not hurt it,' said Cento.
Cormac eyed the android for a moment. 'No, I think they understood the situation perfectly. I also think we're focusing on the wrong thing. The weapon they used is not the issue. What we have to ask is why did they tear the roof off that AGC?'
'To give themselves a greater field of fire,' said Cento.
'No again, on that. They only had one target.'
It was Thorn who gave the required answer. 'So the Maker could see them,' he said.
'Right,' said Cormac. 'I think we're starting to get somewhere now. Those dracomen were here to get to the Maker. To get it defensive.' He looked at Thorn. 'Just like that thing in the tunnel… maybe.' Thorn looked away from him. 'I think their one purpose is that. Maybe they had another purpose, should I cease to become Dragon's best bet for killing the Maker. I guess we won't know that now.'
'We know Dragon tells lies,' said Thorn.
'Yes, but what we don't know is how many, nor how deep they are. Now, Thorn, the Maker stunned you,
Cento and Aiden. It used a different form of energy for you than for them. Aiden said it used just enough to knock him out. You said it was about stun three that hit you, which is incidentally the maximum safe limit used by ES for crowd control. It was specific, therefore it ascertained what you could take, and was careful not to kill you. Does that strike you as the action of a psychopath?'
'No, but…'
Cormac turned to Cento. 'Would a near speed of light collision kill that creature?'
'Yes, very likely.'
'Aiden, are you through yet?'
'Samarkand II and Blegg are ready, Chaline is a few minutes away.'
'Have you Viridian there?'
'Yes.'
'Ask it where the Maker went.'
There was a brief conversation, and then Aiden turned back from the console. 'Viridian said it moved about two hundred kilometres directly east, then went down into a system of caves there. The Thuriot caverns, before the Thuriot mountains… Hold on, the sergeant just said there was an AGC circling at the edge of detection range just men.'
'One thing at a time,' said Cormac. 'He knows what to do.' He scratched at his head and stared at the wall for a moment. Then he said, 'I want Pelter and this killer android off my back now. This is too critical. I think we'll head east for about a hundred and fifty kilometres, and find a suitable place to put down again.'
'Another trap?' asked Thorn.
'Perhaps. We'll see.'
'Chaline's online now,' said Aiden.
Cormac stood up, walked to the front of the carrier and took the seat next to him. Thorn looked at Mika questioningly. She shrugged and said, 'If he doesn't want to tell us, he won't.'
Thorn said, 'One minute he says the Maker isn't a killer. The next minute he says he knows how to kill it. He's an opaque chap at times.'
'He knows what he is doing,' said Cento.
'I didn't suggest otherwise.'
The three of them moved up front to listen.
'Chaline,' said Cormac. 'Is the stage-two runcible through yet?'
'It is, and it would have been set up in another ten hours if I wasn't up here on this damned ship, and if there were no other interruptions.'
Cormac grinned. 'I'm afraid there might be. Tell me, how long would it take for you to relocate the stage-one runcible?'
'What? What the hell do you want—'
'Take it as a metaphorical question for now.'
Chaline calmed down. 'Depends where you want it. The biggest time-eater is laying the's-con cables.'
'How about if you just use a microwave emitter?'
'That would be quicker, I suppose. How far away would you want it?'
'About five hundred kilometres away from all other installations.'
'Why would you want to do that?'
'Just answer the question, please.'
'OK, about thirty hours, if all available staff are on it.'
'Could the AI run it from the new installation?'
'Of course I could,' replied the voice of a bored aristocrat.
'Right, Blegg, if we bring the Maker out after us through the stage-one runcible, having destroyed the buffers after our transmission, it would likely be killed.'
Blegg said, 'Y'want Dragon to know this, of course. It should be kept informed…'
Cormac smiled and shook his head. How the hell had he known? 'Of course,' he said, 'and it is our prerogative to do this. It must be punished for the deaths of those on Samarkand.'
'I see. You have already encountered this Maker?'
'Yes, and I want to be there to see it destroyed. I know remote detonators could—'
Chaline interrupted. 'Are you out of your minds? Destroy another runcible?'
Bleg
g's voice was as smooth as a snake. 'If that is what it takes, then that is what will be done. Y'understand?'
Cormac wondered if Chaline could smell the garlic on his breath and see the flecks of gold in his eyes.
'Right,' said Chaline tighdy.
Blegg had a mandate from Earth Central. He could be argued with - but it was a poindess exercise.
'Will you arrange all that, then? I want a proton weapon left in the containment sphere. You'll have to turn off any proscription device in the sphere for that. I also want a fast AGC beside the runcible, with a covered walkway leading to it. Put three coldsuits in it as well.'
'We'll contact y'when everything is ready. Dragon will be told.'
'Good, after you make contact with us, we'll be flushing the Maker out with the CTDs. That's all.' Cormac rested his fingers on his bottom lip and stared at the console until the transmission was broken. 'Dragon probably heard every word of that,' he said. 'It put a lock on the information concerning the arrival of its dracomen on Samarkand, so it has access to the grid, and I think its tracking down of this Maker to Samarkand confirms that. It will, accordingly, discover all that has happened here. Very little information will escape it.'
'Are you going to tell us what you're up to?' asked Thorn.
'I haven't quite got it all sorted myself. I am, as Blegg might say, giving myself leeway for subterfuge. I'm afraid you'll have to be content with that for now. What you heard then is all you need to know.' He centred his attention on Aiden. 'Aiden, I want you to open a channel from my comunit to Viridian. Preferably through underspace, coded and random scrambled.'
Aiden nodded. They all waited for Cormac to say more.
Thorn became impatient. 'Now?' he prompted.
'Now? Well, I haven't eaten since yesterday and I'm hungry. I suggest we eat before heading out. Pelter needs to be dealt with. I can't have an imponderable like him about while I'm dealing with… other things.'
27
Politics (An excerpt): Everybody knows that we are living in a meritocracy and that those in charge are not human. Everybody knows that AIs are running the show. Who would trust a human planetary governor? Who would trust humans with controlling the vast spread of human migration and trade? Certainly not other humans. As that sublime AI, which is referred to as 'Earth Central', once put it, 'Humans: fast machines that serve the purpose of slow genes.' Most right-thinking people would agree that we are not to be trusted with our own destiny and are glad things are the way they are. Our history should be a salutary lesson held at the forefronts of our minds when we consider these matters. Nowadays you do not see such bloody resolution to events as was seen in the past. I mean, you don't see the machines killing each other, do you?